PROTHERO, CLIFFORD(Cliff) (1898-1990), organiser of the Labour Party
in Wales.

CliffProthero was born 23 September 1898
at 7 Robert Street, Ynysybwl
to a Welsh-speaking family, his father WilliamProthero was a native of Glasbury,
Radnorshire and his mother, Alice, came
from Pontlottyn in the Rhymney Valley.
Educated at the Tre-Robert Boys' School, Ynysybwl, he left school at 13 years of
age to work in the colliery. His father and his
brother, WilliamProthero
Jnr, worked 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, in the
Lady Windsor Colliery for the sum of two
shillings a day. CliffordProthero went to work at a smaller colliery called
Darran Ddu. As a family they attended Zion English Baptist Chapel where he came under the
influence of two very able deacons WilliamWatkins and RichardWoosnam. The influence of Welsh Nonconformity was
acknowledged by him and was very evident in his thinking and in his
behaviour for the rest of his life. At the age of 14 he and his
family moved to the village of Glynneath, and his
father, brother and he found work in the Aberpergwm
Colliery.

He volunteered in 1917 as a soldier in
the First World War; he spent some time in Ireland and saw active service in France.
When he returned he found work in the colliery and began to be
heavily involved in Trade Union affairs. Aberpergwm Colliery had over a thousand miners and within a
few years Cliff, as he was
affectionately known, had been elected as Vice-Chairman of
the Lodge. He took an active role in the General
Strike of 1926, while a student at the Central Labour College in London (1925-7), on a
scholarship from the South Wales Miners Federation.
This was the college where AneurinBevan, NessEdwards, JamesGriffith and other coalfield had
leaders studied. In 1936 he was chosen by the South Wales Federation of Miners to visit the Soviet Union coalfield as a member of an important
four-man delegation. The three others were WillArthur, JimGrant and TomAndrews from Treharris. They were
away for 6 weeks and TomAndrews, on more than one occasion, spoke briefly
in Welsh to the Russian miners, so
that they might become aware of differences between England and Wales, and the uniqueness of Wales and its language.

In 1937 he married Violet ElizabethThomas, a Welsh-speaker from Pontarddulais, daughter of Llewelyn and RowennaThomas. By 1937 he was earning
£3 a week as a checkweigher in the colliery of
Cwm-rhyd-y-gau in the Vale of
Neath. The colliery was closed during the Second
World War and in 1939 he was employed as a
Social Officer dealing with evacuees from English cities who were being sent to west Wales. By this time he had been elected as a councillor on the Neath Urban District
Council as well as acting as unpaid agent to
the Labour Member of Parliament for Neath, SirWilliamJenkins.

In 1942 he applied for the post of a Labour
Party agent for the Eastern District of England, and he was appointed to the job based in their
headquarters in Cambridge. Two years later GeorgeMorris, the organiser for the Labour
Party in Glamorganshire, was killed by a German bomb near his home in Cardiff.
CliffProthero was persuaded by a number of WelshMPs to apply for the post, and in 1944 he was appointed the General Secretary
of the South Wales Regional Council of Labour. This
is how CliffPorthero became in a short period of time a key
figure on the political scene, especially when the Labour
Party won the General Election of 1945 with a large majority.

He succeeded in amalgamating in 1947 the North Wales Labour Federation with the South
Wales Regional Council of Labour to form the Welsh Regional Council of Labour. He built a good
relationship with the Labour leaders in north Wales, in particular Goronwy
O.Roberts and Huw T.Edwards. From now on he was the
anchor man for the Labour Party in Wales. He prepared a discussion paper based on a memorandum
submitted by Huw T.Edwards under the title,
‘Democratic Devolution in Wales’
and submitted it to the National Executive Committee of
the Labour Party for further consideration.

Through the leadership of JamesGriffiths, assisted by Goronwy O.Roberts, the Welsh
Labour Party agreed in 1948 to accept the
idea of an Advisory Council for Wales, and this was approved by the Labour Government led by ClementAttlee. The purpose of the Advisory
Council was to maintain a close relationship between the
people of Wales and the central Government. CliffProthero was nominated by the Regional
Council as the Chairman of the new body, the
Council for Wales, but JamesGriffiths insisted that Huw T.Edwards should be the chairman. He never regretted submitting the name of Huw T.Edwards rather than CliffProthero to the Prime Minister.

In the early 1950sCliffProthero and the majority of the members of the Welsh Regional Council of Labour were completely
opposed to the campaign for a Welsh Parliament. Prothero argued that the five Labourmembers of Parliament who took an active part in the
campaign, namely CledwynHughes, Goronwy O.Roberts, T. W.Jones, TudorWatkins and S. O.Davies, should be reprimanded,
but he was overruled by the wisdom of Huw
T.Edwards and JamesGriffiths who cautioned
toleration. After JamesGriffiths was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, the Labour devolutionists had the upper hand over their
opponents such as IorwerthThomas, NessEdwards and GeorgeThomas. When JamesGriffiths succeeded in getting
AneurinBevan to agree to the policy of
devolution in 1959, the call for a Secretary of State for Wales with a seat in the Cabinet was included in the Manifesto for the 1959General election. CliffProthero and the anti-devolution WelshLabour MPs had to toe the line for the time being.
Indeed Prothero in his memoirs admits
that ‘James Griffiths used all his power as a negotiator in
an attempt to persuade other members of this committee of the
justice of this cause.’ He was very successful.

CliffPorthero had a successful period as the chief organiser of the Labour Party in Wales. He began to arrange large Labour
Party rallies for the whole of Wales. The
first was held in Newtown in 1950
and he persuaded ClementAttlee, JamesGriffiths and HughGaitskell to address 5,000 supporters who travelled
to the rally from all parts of Wales. He succeeded in strengthening the office in Charles Street, Cardiff and gathered around
him organisers for the women's branches, the Trade
Unions and the Youth movement. The Labour Party succeeded under his guidance to strengthen its
presence in WelshWales, and by 1957 most of the Welsh heartland had Labour MPs. Labour won Caernarfon in 1945, Merionethshire in 1950; Conwy in 1950, Anglesey and Pembrokeshire in 1951 and Carmarthenshire in 1957. He was the agent for the by-election
in Carmarthenshire in 1957 which was
won by MeganLloyd George, who had left the
Liberal Party for Labour after her
defeat in 1951 in Anglesey. But the
most notable victory for which he was responsible was in Cardiganshire in the General Election of 1966 when Labour won with a majority
of 523. Prothero was the agent for ElystanMorgan who had fought five times for Plaid Cymru before he became a member of the Labour Party. The victory in 1966 was due
to a great number of reasons, but the professionalism of the agent,
who had returned from retirement, was one factor.

Prothero retired on 28
February 1965 after an extremely successful period as organiser of the Labour Party in Wales. His
retirement was spent in Penarth in a house
called Hedd Wyn. He prepared his memoirs in the
volume entitled Recount in 1982.

He was a personality that one greatly admired, for he began his
working life as a miner at the age of thirteen, and in
his mature years he knew all the leading politicians of the Labour Party in Britain,
corresponding regularly with them, arranging committees, deputations
and tours as well as preparing press releases for constituency
secretaries and local Labour Party leaders and
candidates throughout Wales. He remained a man of the people and it
was a privilege to converse with him over a period of 30 years.
Though he is regarded by some historians as being anti-Welsh, this
was not so. He and his wife supported a Welsh-language Independent chapel in Penarth while he was
also tower of strength in the English Congregationalist
Chapel and after 1972 with the United Reformed Church. Prothero defended the sanctity of Sunday and was
supportive of the Lord's Day Fellowship in
Wales. His standpoint on Sunday observance was published in The Inheritance, the journal of the
Fellowship, in 1981. He played a major role in the devolution
debate, but his successor, EmrysJones added greatly to his
input. Prothero co-operated with DavidThomas, a pioneer of
the Labour movement in Gwynedd, in the
printing of material in the Welsh language for use in
the Welsh heartland where Labour did
so well during his tenure as General Secretary of the
Labour Party in Wales.

CliffProthero was a member from its inception of the Welsh Tourist Board, a member of the Welsh Joint Education Committee and the Welsh
Broadcasting Council, and he chaired for years the
magistrates' Bench at Penarth. His wife
was also a magistrate in Penarth. In
1965 he was awarded an OBE for
his political and public services. After a long and productive life
he died peacefully at his home Hedd Wyn, 2
Church Avenue, Penarth on the 24th of October 1990. His
funeral was held on Tuesday afternoon, 30 October
1990 at Bethel Welsh Independent Chapel, Penarth and later at Thornhill
Crematorium, Cardiff.